October 16, 2013

November 13, 2013

February 26, 2014

IPv6 exercise

Before the test, make a list of ten network services (websites, non-web networked applications such as VoIP, IM, printing) that you're going to try to see if they work in an IPv6-only situation. Write down how you expect the service to behave: work normally, not work at all, or …? Connect one or more devices (laptops, other computers, tables, smartphones) to the IPv6-only network. Try the network services. How many worked? How many worked/didn't work as you expected? Any surprises?

Energy use exercises

The goal of these exercises is to investigate the impact of networking parameters on energy use. With laptops it's possible to monitor power adapter and/or battery electricity draw, which includes the energy use by NICs. On non-portable systems, CPU energy use may be monitored, or, if no other option is available, CPU utilization could be used as a proxy for energy use. Please form a group of two and select or be given one of the exercises below. Come up with a test plan, run tests, tabulate the results and draw conclusions. Compile your results on a single sheet of A4 paper and hand it in. Then, confer with other groups that performed the same exercise. Compare test methodology and results and prepare a 5-minute presentation that outlines the tests and results. (I.e., one presentation for all the results from all groups that performed the same exercise.)

Measuring Power Usage

Under MacOS it's possible to obtain fine-grained system-wide power use information through the included System Information tool when running on battery power. However, the numbers are updated at a fairly low frequency, even if the application is asked to refresh the information more frequently.

The Intel Power Gadget for MacOS, Windows and Linux provides high resolution CPU power information.

Exercise 1: ethernet speed

Connect a test system to another system (such as your server) using wired ethernet. Execute data transfers at 10, 100 and 1000 Mbps and evaluate the energy impact of the chosen ethernet link speed. Also compare the impact of ethernet link speed when the network is idle.

Exercise 2: energy-efficient ethernet

This requires two systems that support energy-efficient ethernet. Connect the two systems. Execute data transfers with the ethernet link in energy efficient mode and with the ethernet link in regular, non-EEE mode and evaluate the energy impact of the two configurations, both in the presence of sustained data transfers and when the link is idle.

Exercise 3: IPv4 vs IPv6

Connect a test system to another system (such as your server) using wired ethernet. Execute data transfers over IPv4 and over IPv6, comparing the energy use of the two protocols. Perform the tests with and without TSO enabled.

Exercise 4: MTU and TSO (IPv4)

Connect a test system to another system (such as your server) using wired ethernet. Execute data transfers using IPv4 with at least three different MTU sizes and evaluate the impact of MTU size on transfer speed and energy use. Perform the tests with and without TSO enabled.

Exercise 4: MTU and TSO (IPv6)

Connect a test system to another system (such as your server) using wired ethernet. Execute data transfers using IPv6 with at least three different MTU sizes and evaluate the impact of MTU size on transfer speed and energy use. Perform the tests with and without TSO enabled.